"The Department of Work and Pensions is refusing to publish the names of charities and businesses where tens of thousands of unemployed people are being made to work without pay for four weeks at a time.
In a battle with the information commissioner, the DWP has said that the government's mandatory work programme would "collapse" if the names were made public due to the likelihood of protests against the organisations involved."
The British Government is so afraid that its slave labour strategy will become common knowledge that they have attempted to hide the facts from the people. They will not succeed in this shamefaced subtefuge which is more typical of the banana republics and medieval theocracies we sell weapons to than contemporary Britain.
We shall discover every organisation including all of the charities using workfare and blacklist them. The governments pathetic attempt to suppress this information will be overturned and each charity in turn will now need to prove their innocence to escape the wrath of the 'Big Society' and the loss of income this will entail.
Kudos to the British Heart Foundation who under the increasing public pressure has announced its withdrawal from the workfare scheme. It is one of of many charities that will have the contributions 'gun' held to its head in the coming weeks until they also agree to withdraw from workfare or go under.
Commercial companies like Argos and Superdrug are now being targeted for demonstrations and boycotts, join the campaign to punish the slave traders.
If they refuse to give up participating, we will mount a campaign to bankrupt them for their complicity in slavery by witholding all support and running negative publicity campaigns, including shopfront protests and internet campaigns via social networking sites and the blogosphere.
The Guardian article (9 November) by Shiv Malik reporting this shameful use of coercian and slavery amply demonstrates how afraid the Con Dems are that the true extent of workfare will get out into the public domain.
Too late.... we are on the case and we will collapse organisations using workfare and that is a promise.
All UK charities are now under suspicion and they will each have to make positive declarations that they do not and will not use workfare slavery to be acqitted..... silence will assume complicity and sanctions will be put into place to hurt them.
Under the slogan Open Up Government and Close Down Workfare a inquisition has now begun to identify offenders and take appropriate action against them.
This is active citizenship and militant consumerism in action, every decent citizen must now do their utmost to destroy workfare or destroy businesses including charities that subscribe to it.
Here is a link to the Guardian article.
Boycott Workfare is a UK-wide campaign to end forced unpaid work for people who receive welfare. Workfare profits the rich by providing free labour, whilst threatening the poor by taking away welfare rights if people refuse to work without a living wage. We are a grassroots campaign, formed in 2010 by people with experience of workfare and those concerned about its impact. We expose and take action against companies and organisations profiting from workfare; encourage organisations to pledge to boycott it; and actively inform people of their rights.
The Government is refusing to disclose the list of shame so let us the Big Society (i.e. the voluntary government) do it for them.
Here is a link to the list the Con Dem government slave traders wants to hide from you:
http://www.boycottworkfare.org/?page_id=16
http://www.boycottworkfare.org/?page_id=16
It's hard to believe this Reaganesque "workfare" bullcrap is going on in the U.K. in 2012 on such a large scale.
ReplyDeleteIt recalls the old practice of rounding up itinerant black citizens in the South for after minor offenses and turning them over to private white businesses like coal mines and farms to get free labor from those who were supposed to be free people under the Constitution. This practice only ended under the law after the Civil Rights Era.
Unpaid labor of course continues in other ways here.
It's great that The Guardian and other media are finally bringing this to light.
Doug said -"It recalls the old practice of rounding up itinerant black citizens in the South for after minor offenses and turning them over to private white businesses like coal mines and farms to get free labor from those who were supposed to be free people under the Constitution."
ReplyDeleteWe have the same thing here its called Community Payback where 'offenders' are forced to work for nothing...payback where nobody gets paid - there's a bit of doublethink for you.
But workfare is much worse than that.... it is truly slave labour that undercuts people's wages and employment prospects by an army of conscript labourers deployed by the Department of Work [sic] and Pensions.
So the government and their bankster pals preside over a major economic disaster, while getting filthy rich themselves of course. They throw people out of work and force them onto benefits.... so they can do their old jobs for a fraction of the cost on Workfare. A fiendish public school jape or what?
We will be screwing charities and businesses to breaking point if they continue to co-operate with the scheme, they will be selectively targetted for boycott and we will make it hurt them by demos and campaigns to discredit and damage them.
This strategy is already paying dividends Doug, a number of big companies and charities have now withdrawn from providing forced employment "opportunities" under the scheme and more will when we get around to frightening them enough.
The UK is (like all other EU members) a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) which has been adopted here in domestic legislation in the form of the Human Rights Act(1998).
Article 4 of the ESRC which forbids slavery states:-
(1) No one shall be held in slavery or servitude.
(2) No one shall be required to perform forced or compulsory labour.
(3) For the purpose of this Article the term "forced or compulsory labour" shall not include:
(a) any work required to be done in the ordinary course of detention imposed in accordance to the provisions of Article 5 of this Convention or during conditional release from such detention;
(b) any service of a military character or, in the case of conscientious objectors in countries where they are recognised, service exacted instead of compulsory military service;
(c) any service exacted in case of an emergency or calamity threatening the life or well-being of the community;
(d) any work or service which forms part of normal civic obligations.
Cameron and his gang of theives have signed up to thi. Only recently Home Sceretary Theresa May reluctantly used the Human Rights Act to refuse (under irresisistible public pressure) to extradite Gary McKinnon to the US.
What rank hypocrites these Con Dem functionaries are....the unmandated millionaire toffs and unprincipled belly ticklers of the IMF and the puppeteers of Greater Bilderbergia.
Revenge will indeed be sweet when it comes Doug!
It doesn't add up in so many ways. Most of this 'workfare' labour actually takes place in Charity shops. Recently I was told about the local impact of this government scheme on local charities. It seems the job center sends people to work in charity shops which means the experienced volunteers, those people who have given up their time voluntarily for many years in order to support the charity of their choice are no longer needed. These volunteers tend to be retired people or people with a special interest in that particular charity; usually people who have lost someone from cancer or heart desease, or some one who has experienced homelessness or mental health problems, these are the type of dedicated volunteers who are being thrown out of their voluntary jobs to make way for the people sent from the job center. What this is doing to the volunteers is bad enough but because it is mostly charities that are involved there is zero chance of this 'work experience' ever leading to any sort of paid employment. Plus, once this particular idiotic scheme runs its course and expires, the charity shops who spent years building up and training reliable, dedicated teams of volunteers, will be left with no one to work in their shops, because by that time there will be no volunteers left. I have a friend who is Bipolar and this is the position she finds herself in, she has worked for the Shelter shop for years,and now there is no need for her because the jobs she was doing are all being done by 'workfare'.
ReplyDeleteThe other businesses who are participating in the scheme don't offer jobs at the end of the month, thats because there are no jobs to offer and the experience gained isn't 'real' working experience. These companies don't actually have any thing useful for the participants to do, they just invent tasks in order to keep people busy. The whole thing is crazy.
In some ways I can see a need to introduce the work ethic to some of the long term unemployed who have never worked. I know kids who leave the school with no hopes or aspirations, they come from families where the parents, grand parents and siblings habitually live on benefit and never work. These families are very much a minority but for those particular people I can see the point in encouraging them to get up every morning, establish a routine, be somewhere at a certain time and undertake some sort of useful task, but there has to be a better way than this, this just wastes every ones time.
You have made the point very well Loretta thanks, the Con Dems are even asset stripping charity shops....can you believe it?
DeleteThis bunch of despicable public school arseholes are Americanising the country and dismantling the welfare state on behalf of the IMF and Wall Street.
These agents of an unfriendly power have been colluding with gangsters to destroy our welfare system and the NHS for decades actually, they are enemies of the people and the functionaries of a foreign empire, traitors and quislings!
The slavery they have ushered in on behalf of their Transatlantic bedfellows is an insult to the people of this country who since Magna Carta in 1215 have struggled and suffered to create an decent life, a welfare society. This is not America we are being culturally infantilised by these spoiled half educated Bullington Club dickheads who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
These chinless wonders of the landed classes and some jerk from New Jersey or somewhere is stiching us up....not just us, but the Spanish, the Greeks, the Portuguese, the Italians.... everybody ...and its time to hit them back, this cannot go on any longer!
WE MUST RESIST FASCISM ...people are being arrested for thought crimes in this country ..... it is not acceptable, it is not British and we must all stand shoulder to shoulder against these abusers once and for all!
On Wednesday (14 Oct) it is European Day of Action, general strikes in all the countries with the bottle to strike back against the EU/IMF/World Bank/Nato etc etc etc......ironically I am meeting union officials on another matter that day...but after the meeting I'm pitching into a solidarity event here in support of our brothers and sisters in struggle, if there is a barricade I know which side of it I'm on.....come the day!
Your testament is based in calm logic and I really appreciate that Loretta ....but I simply can't let this happen.... whatever it takes to stop it count me in... and at the same time as events unfold count nothing out!
They're just taking the piss now!